ECON 2014 MANAGERIAL ECONOMICS – MODIFIED Assignment 1 – COMPANY ANALYSIS Weight: 40% of your final Grade Deadline: 19 April, 2020 Sunday 23:59 submission via Wattle, Turnitin. Type of Assignment: Analytical qualitative Essay type analysis, word limit 1,800 words (not including references list and appendixes). Referencing Style: Harvard Referencing Style (see link to a Harvard Referencing Style guidance on Wattle, under Welcome week block). Academic Depth requirement: You have to use min 8 relevant articles from academic (means peer-reviewed) journals and free number of other sources (not specified, so use if a very relevant source and able to strengthen your arguments and support your analysis – company reports, industry reports, websites, business publications, consulting materials, magazines, newspapers, etc. ). Assignment Description Please choose one Company at your local (e.g. Canberra), domestic (e.g. Australia), international (e.g. China) or global (truly global) market. Please answer 3 questions regarding business operations of chosen company by providing economic/managerial analysis and suggesting a recommendation/solution to each of 3 questions. You have to choose an existed company of any size (from emerging start-up and family business till well established multinational enterprise /truly global company). Please provide analysis and solutions to the following 3 Questions below: Question 1: Please briefly introduce your company. Specify one distinct product or service of your company (if your company offers a variety of products/services to the market, then specify one product/one product line) and analyse at which stage of a product cycle the company (with this product in mind) is currently operating? (based on any available information, data, reports, an insider information, observations, etc.) Support your answer and argumentation with theoretical concept, academic articles’ support, any data needed, so provide a credible evidence and an argumentation to your analysis. Identify if your company does have a competitive advantage if any (provide an evidence to support your opinion). Advice: avoid choosing companies like Coles or Walmart with absence of one distinct product. Choose a distinct product/product line (it will be much easier to do an analysis and find a data), examples from the last semester: Uber, Qantas, Starbucks. You can use them as well, but you have to do your own analysis based on the market situation of this year and new data, that have changedJ. Please provide recommendation to your company Management on recommended actions if any. The use of fresh updated information (up to February 2020) is strong advantage, as resembles actual real life analysis and decision making. Question 2: Please analyse the type of the market structure (perfect competition, monopoly, monopolistic competition, oligopoly) where your chosen company operates and present 3 main current/potential barriers to entry (if any). Support your choice of company’s market structure and your analysis with theoretical concept, an academic articles, any other credible information/data/expert opinion/industry reports/company reports/website details etc. Provide recommendations to company Management on the dynamics of market structure for your company. Question 3: Please analyse a pricing strategy for your chosen product. Please identify if your company uses any price discrimination methods and if company uses, please define what are they. Provide a recommendation to your company Management on possible potential modifications of their pricing strategy for profit maximization. Please support your arguments and recommendation with relevant theoretical concept, academic article, other relevant credible sources and data if needed. OR MODIFICATION: Option 1: You replace one of the 3 initial questions with a new question: Q: How your chosen company does adjust to the pandemic situation and your recommendation what your company could do under current dramatic changes to keep in the business. So then choose which Question: 1 or 2 or 3 you would like to replace, keep any 2 current questions and add answer to this new Q. Option 2: You keep all 3 questions the same and progress with 3 Questions as initially planned. 1. Stage of Product Cycle 2. Market Structure 3. Pricing Strategy Your mark will not depend on a choice of Options 1 or 2, but on a way how you address the question and on the depth of recommendation and sources used and strengths of arguments and theory used. Wish you a great start of preparation of your assignments! Sincerely, Dr. Marina Iskhakova Suggested structure of your Assignment: (Word limit 1,800 words (+/-10%) doesn’t include table of content, references, appendixes, etc.) Paper Title (Company /Market/ Country) • Table of Content • Introduction and company and product introduction • Body of Essay Answer Q1 + Recommendation Answer Q2 + Recommendation Answer Q3 + Recommendation • Conclusion • References (min 8 academic references + the rest of references) • Appendixes (supporting data, graphs, illustrations) Marking Rubric is on Wattle under Assessments. Wish you a good and productive preparation period!
